The United Nations of Photographyhttps://unitednationsofphotography.com
The United Nations of Photography is an independent platform formed to encourage informed lens based media conversation and debate.Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:49:13 +0000en-US
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32324181777710 Podcasts Photographers Should Check Out!https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/12/10-podcasts-photographers-should-check-out/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/12/10-podcasts-photographers-should-check-out/#respondThu, 12 Sep 2019 09:35:36 +0000https://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=7123We here at the UNP produce a weekly podcast, A Photographic Life, and we have been included in a number of ‘best of’ lists that are aimed at photographers. It is always nice to be selected for such lists, but with the exception of perhaps one or two other podcasts on these lists we have no interest in those podcasts devoted to photography from the aspect of kit, photoshop, marketing or ‘guy chat’!

We want a podcast that is going to further our knowledge about what to photograph, what to read, what to listen to and what stories to tell. We may be alone in this but just in case we are not we have complied a list of the podcasts we would like our podcast to be included in. One not just for photographers!

These are listed in no particular order:

1. The Art Weekly PodcastsA weekly podcast although they took the summer off! This is a podcast focused on breaking news, art world’s big stories and insider insights to exhibitions and events around the world, created by the editorial team at The Art Newspaper with the informed and engaged the help of special guests.www.theartnewspaper.com/podcast

2. A Word in Your Ear: The Word Podcast
Although this podcast could definitely be accused of being middle-aged ‘guy chat’ the level of conversation raises it above the ‘two men in a pub’ or ‘two men drinking coffee’ format of so many photography podcasts. Coming from the editorial team behind the now defunct The Word magazine, it is recorded upstairs in a pub and focuses on writers of music related books. A treasure trove of stories, characters and popular culture references it is a touch stone for lost and forgotten recent history narratives.http://wordpodcast.co.uk

3. The Secret History of the Future
Journey into the past, and you’ll discover the secret history of the future. From the world’s first cyberattack in 1834, to 19th-century virtual reality, The Economist’s Tom Standage and Slate’s Seth Stevenson examine the historical precedents that can transform our understanding of modern technology, predicting how it might evolve and highlighting pitfalls to avoid. Discovering how people reacted to past innovations can also teach us about ourselves. That’s the makers description of what this one is about but it is more than that as it is also accessible to ‘non-geek, non-tech’ people like us! In a medium so impacted by technology it would be strange to not want to have at least some idea of where we are going and why!https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-secret-history-of-the-future/id1422830638

4. Anything But Silent: A British Library PodcastProduced from the The British Library’s extensive archives of both written and oral accounts plus new interviews with writers, archivists and academics this podcast focuses on the importance of writing and communicating. Two aspects essential to any photographer creating visual narratives.www.bl.uk/podcasts

5.How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
This is a podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right. Every week, a new interviewee explores what their failures taught them about how to succeed better, sometimes people you may have heard of including novelists, athletes, musicians, cooks actors and politicians, predominantly woman but with the occasional man thrown into the mix. We don’t think we need to explain why this podcast is so helpful to so many people, fear of failure is endemic today and within the subjective world of photography a constant discussion point.www.elizabethdayonline.co.uk

6.People’s LandscapesNot all podcasts are weekly or monthly serials, some are short and sweet! That is the case with this four part documentary series created by the National Trust in which the hosts explore how geology and landscapes have influenced the communities and cultures of the British isles. From what connects ice-age floods, and the dialects we speak, and how pre-historic geological events, can form the bedrock of community, or become the driving force behind neighbourhood feuds. One not just for the landscape photographers, fascinating stuff also for those documenting our changing cultural and physical environment.www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/peoples-landscapes-explore-the-places-that-have-shaped-the-nation

7. 13 Minutes to the MoonThe title gives this one away and despite my having no interest in anything to do with space, this long format documentary format is fascinating and succeeds in getting someone not interested in the subject, interested! The perfect template for any story teller, showing how to work around a story and bring what may appear to be fringe players into the central focus of the narrative. Created by the BBC World Service.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads

8. Mag CultureThe magazine has long been a showcase for photography and the decline of advertising revenue over the past decade has seen many titles close and commissioning budgets slashed. Former art director and creative director Jeremy Leslie fly’s the flag for the magazine in this podcast created under the brand of his London based magazine shop. Essential listening for any photographer who wants to understand the current editorial environment.https://magculture.com/category/magculture-audio/

9. The Penguin Podcast
As you can probably see by now this list is based on the idea of listening to experts to learn and that’s why we are recommending this one. The Panguin podcast contains conversations with some our their leading authors and creative thinkers, speaking with them to seek understanding on how they write and where their ideas come from. It also has a nice feature where guests bring to the interview a handful of objects that have inspired their work. As visual storytellers it makes sense to hear from fellow storytellers.www.penguin.co.uk/podcasts/

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/12/10-podcasts-photographers-should-check-out/feed/07123PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 72: Plus Photographer Robert Trachtenberghttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/11/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-72-plus-photographer-robert-trachtenberg/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/11/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-72-plus-photographer-robert-trachtenberg/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 05:00:04 +0000http://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=6018In episode 72 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the importance of collaboration and making connections. He also suggests that photography competitions could film their judging process.

Plus this week photographer Robert Trachtenberg takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Robert Trachtenberg’s photographs have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone among other publications. His Advertising clients include NBC, CBS, ABC, TNT, TBS, Disney, MGM and HBO. Trachtenberg’s photos have been selected for numerous awards including the American Photography Annual, and American Photo Magazine’s Images of the Year. He has written, produced and directed several documentaries including On Cukor on the legendary Hollywood director George Cukor, the Emmy nominated Cary Grant: A Class Apart, which he wrote, produced and directed and AFI’s Master Class – The Art of Collaboration, with guests Steven Spielberg, composer John Williams, and actor Mark Wahlberg among other guests. He is also the winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Direction for his American Masters film, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise. His most recent film for PBS was the Emmy nominated Bing Crosby: Rediscovered. He is also the author of When I Knew published by Harper Collins, and the newly released Red-Blooded American Male. www.roberttrachtenberg.com

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/11/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-72-plus-photographer-robert-trachtenberg/feed/06018Constructing the Photo Narrativehttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/constructing-the-photo-narrative/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/constructing-the-photo-narrative/#commentsWed, 04 Sep 2019 10:14:09 +0000https://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=6704I was talking with a photographer recently interviewing me for an article dealing with photography within education. Not just formal education but also self-education and self-initiated learning, it was an easy free-flowing conversation and at one point he raised the issue of visual storytelling within photography.

He stated that I often spoke about creating narrative and storytelling but that he found it one of the hardest concepts to implement. He went on to comment that when speaking with a photographer/photography commentator he had been told that the problem was that photographers create narrative by taking images away, not through construction.

I don’t know where to start with such a comment, it demonstrates such a narrow understanding of how photographers work across a broad spectrum of genres and an unbelievable disrespect for photographers that I find it hard to address such blinkered ignorance. But, the interviewer had taken the comment on board and I therefore felt the need to re-balance this understanding.

To do this I used the metaphor of a writer being given a bag of words and told to throw away the ones they did not like. Those that were left would of course not provide the writer with a story, what they would be left with would be a bag of disconnected words that they liked the look and sound of, not a story. A writer needs to construct words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters, chapters into a narrative, with a beginning middle and end.

Playing with the story form allows the writer to express themselves and progress our understanding of narrative construction. A filmmaker does the same, constructing narrative from scenes and viewpoints. I’m sure we can all remember a film or book that made us re-think our pre-conceived idea of what constitute narrative storytelling. For me it was Christopher Nolan’s 2000 release Memento (see lead image) based on the pitch/novel Memento Mori by Jonathan Nolan. Memento is presented as two different sequences of scenes interspersed during the film: a series in black-and-white that is shown chronologically, and a series of colour sequences shown in reverse order. It plays with narrative and the viewer placing them into the position of the film’s main protagonist. It plays with your pre-conceptions, and I like that. the recent Martin Scorsese ‘documentary’ on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue does a similar thing. It plays with truth, structure and expectation.

The writer and the filmmaker construct narrative, they develop narrative and they evolve narrative from an initial idea/construct/story and so should the photographer. I have written previously about the ‘nuts and bolts’ of this and the links to those articles are at the end of this one. I don’t want to deal with that here, but what I do want to address is this acceptance of the practice of visual storytelling alongside these established creative narrative forms.

The creation of a narrative is no different within photography than it is within writing or filmmaking or for that matter songwriting or poetry. It requires a sense of destination, and a journey towards that destination. Of course that destination may change as the journey takes place but it needs to be there at the beginning. This demands of the storyteller, a period of research, an idea of audience and an empathetic relationship with their characters. None of which can be gained purely through an edit of images.

The edit itself relies on the same factors to ensure that the images chosen establish, progress and conclude the narrative. A narrative demands an objectivity within the edit based on the requirement of the image, it cannot be based upon non-contextual aesthetic decisions.

To suggest that photographers do not understand this and create images on the basis of being able to ‘edit’ a narrative from a random collection of images, loosely based around a subject matter is to dismiss the history of successful photo narratives, that have been so obviously carefully constructed and presented. Narrative has long been intrinsic to the photographic medium and the intellectual engagement it requires has long been understood by photographers. It is not today and has never been based upon ‘luck’ or ‘chance’.

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/constructing-the-photo-narrative/feed/26704PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 71: Plus Photographer Venetia Deardenhttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-71-plus-photographer-venetia-dearden/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-71-plus-photographer-venetia-dearden/#respondWed, 04 Sep 2019 05:00:40 +0000http://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=5794In episode 71 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering photographic copyright, the appropriation of images and how to work out what to charge a client.

Plus this week photographer Venetia Dearden takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which she answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Venetia Dearden’s interest in photography began in her school darkroom. However, it was after studying for an MA in Anthropology and a Postgraduate Degree in Photojournalism in 2001, that she began a career in documentary photography. Venetia went on to become a member of the VII Photo agency from 2011 – 2013 and a project facilitator for PhotoVoice. Her award-winning project of families living close to the land, resulted in the publication of her first book Somerset Stories, Fivepenny Dreams in 2008. Her second book Glastonbury, Another Stage, a seven-year portrait study of the UK Festival, was published in 2010, and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2011 her book Mulberry, was published containing work created as part of a two-year collaboration documenting every aspect of the British brand. A personal exploration of freedom and the American Road trip followed in 2012 with Venetia’s book Eight Days. Her passion for publishing books of her work continued in 2015 with Notes from Tangiers documenting an assignment to Tangiers in 2013 where she had met the artist and publisher Elena Prentice. Venetia contributed to Rise published in 2016 and commissioned by Geneva Global, documenting women at work in Ethiopia and to 209 Women, portraits of female MP’s by female photographers. She is presently based in Italy with her family, where she is exploring new work and raising her two daughters. www.venetiadearden.com

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/09/04/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-71-plus-photographer-venetia-dearden/feed/05794Has the Emperor Been Shopping?https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/31/has-the-emperor-been-shopping/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/31/has-the-emperor-been-shopping/#commentsSat, 31 Aug 2019 07:37:38 +0000https://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=6458I worked with fashion photography from 1986 to approximately 1999 with some of the world’s leading fashion photographers. I sat looking at the catwalk in Paris, New York, Milan and London many times, as I witnessed the birth of the super model become the arrival of Grunge and Britpop. I sat at Alexander McQueen shows and the blandest of retail focused ‘designer’ shows. I’ve done a lot of fashion and as my wife says with irony “In fashion their are only victims!”

I understood the role of fashion photography in selling clothes, because just as food photography is created to sell you food, and music photography is created to sell you the band, fashion photography is about selling clothes and selling clothes is a serious business.

Fashion tribes set the agenda on the street and in the clubs as the ‘big’ name and upcoming designers created two collections a year. Fashion photographers worked with fashion editors to create the images that bought both world’s together with a sprinkling of high street to make the aspirational seem affordable. Everyone understood their role and some great work was created, both classic – think Coffin, Penn, Avedon, Ritts, Bailey, Horvat, Horst, Hoyningen-Huene, Sieff, Roversi, Lindbergh, Clarke – and by those that broke the rules, such as Newton, Duffy, Leiter, Knight, Frank, Klein, Richardson (Bob not Terry!), Toscani and Von Wagenheim for example. If you want to put all of this in some form of chronological order I highly recommend Martin Harrison’s brilliant history of fashion photography Appearances. But I digress…

As Bob Dylan said “I used to care but things have changed”, I have changed and so has fashion photography. I have been thinking recently about when and why the change began to happen, because there has been a change and I think it can be clearly put down to two photographers inspired by two other photographers in the very early 1990s. I believe the two photographers that began the change were Corrine Day and Jurgen Teller, the inspiration came from Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. I could also include Glen Lutchford but Glen was always more classic, more filmic than Corrine, more interested in the photography.

But I think I can be even more specific in pinpointing a turning point and that was with the images Teller created in 1997 for a series of three promotional flip books for the UK high street fashion brand Jigsaw. The brand took a big risk, with images of a man leaping from a building, falling from a bicycle and careering down concrete stairs all in high-contrast black and white to sell clothes. Professional stuntmen were used instead of models and the video footage from which the stills were taken – the images were still grabs from the moving footage – was shown on a loop in Jigsaw’s retail stores. The whole production echoed the sense of production and performance of the artist Yves Klein in his 1960 work Leap into the Void and the video performance of artists such as Bruce McLean and Gilbert and George in the early 1970s. In short it was about art not clothes.

So, why the change? Well, I guess it was about having a problem with being seen as a fashion photographer and selling clothes, and a desire to be seen as an artist within the contemporary art gallery space. More Eggleston, than Parkinson. More about the bracelet than the lighting, the mood rather than the brief, the ugly rather than the beautiful, the personal over the commercial. The art world was attractive to both young photographers and young stylists and fashion editors. It was perceived to be intellectually/creatively superior to retail and encouraged personal expression over fulfilling a brief. Fashion photographers emerged – many through Instagram – with no or little photographic training or understanding. Adored by the fashion industry eager to seem ‘clever’ and connected with the art scene, to them the process of using photography to sell clothes became less and less important. But of course it wasn’t and isn’t.

I don’t want this to seem like a history lesson but I do think it is important to understand the context of what I am about to say. I have been asked on a number of occasions to start/run/refresh courses within universities on fashion photography and each time I have declined the offer. Each time I have given the same reason, which is that fashion photography has changed and that you no longer need to study fashion photography to become a fashion photographer. Study photography by all means and that may help but it is not essential.

Fashion photography today is in a very confused state. Paid for commissioned fashion photography has to be about the clothes or at least go someway towards selling the clothes, selling an aspiration. If you buy these clothes you will look like this, live like this, feel like this person in the picture. Don’t and you won’t! We all have enough clothes, we don’t need to buy more but we need to believe that we do. That is the role of fashion photography but we are now in a situation where personal agendas/interests/investigations/passions/influences are leading work that is being presented as fashion photography by those describing themselves as fashion photographers.

The king and queen of this evolution are Ryan McGinley and Viviane Sassen, photographers whose work sits as comfortably in the gallery space as it does within a Levi’s ad or on the front cover of Frieze magazine. Interestingly, Sassen studied fashion design not photography and the retrospective book of her work is titled In and Out of Fashion. McGinley was a snowboard instructor who went on to study graphics, and had his first self-initiated exhibition of photographs aged twenty-three. Young fashion photographers now see themselves as artists not as commissionable photographers and I believe that is a problem for them and fashion photography. Creating images that make the clothes the hero and retaining a visual language is hard, creating images that ignore the clothes is easy.

The spark that instigated this article was a proliferation of articles exalting young fashion photographers on the I-D magazine website. I started to notice that despite being described as ‘fashion’ photographers the work that they were creating had no connection with clothes or the fashion industry. The work mainly consisted of highly personal documentations of a group of friends, often undressed, often sexually provocative or ambiguous, and in essence pale interpretations of the work created by McGinley. That’s fine and I am not commenting on the work itself other than to comment on its lack of originality but the bigger issue is that the work is uncommissionable.

It maybe interesting and challenging to some – repetitive and obvious to me – but to describe it as fashion photography misunderstands its required basic function. There are photographers such as Teller, McGinley and Sassen who can create work that transcends what is too often seen as ‘catalogue’ photography and retains an integrity that the luxury brands want to attach themselves to, but they are few and far between. The majority of the photographers attempting to emulate their success I am seeing are growing large Instagram followings, and putting their work in glossy, expensive, low-circulation independent magazines that are not paying them to be published. In fact some are charging the photographers to be published. Meanwhile, fashion brands and retailers are looking for photographers who can sell their clothes with creativity and understanding of the commercial reality of selling clothes.

Fashion photography is a business and like all business’s it has its rules, set by the clients that have to be understood by the photographers. The art world is the same. To straddle both demands intelligence, creativity and determination but most importantly an understanding of two sets of rules. To dismiss one in favour of the other only alienates one set of clients, and when that is the set of clients that holds the purse strings, that can be an expensive mistake.

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/31/has-the-emperor-been-shopping/feed/26458PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 70: Plus Photographer Eduardo Soteras Jalilhttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/28/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-70-plus-photographer-eduardo-soteras-jalil/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/28/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-70-plus-photographer-eduardo-soteras-jalil/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 05:00:51 +0000http://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=5765In episode 70 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the use of ‘free’ images by magazines, the commissioning of lifestyle photography and the future for editorial based publishing.

Plus this week photographer Eduardo Soteras Jalil takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Eduardo Soteras Jalil was born in Argentina in 1975 to a Lebanese family. He majored in Economical Sciences, worked as an independent consultant for a couple of years, got deeply bored, and started to travel. Self-taught he began to work as a freelance photographer in Palestine in 2005. In 2006 he developed the participatory photography project Identity Document, with children of migrant workers in Israel. During that time he also co-founded Activestills – a collective of activist photographers in Israel and Palestine – and Activevision, an organization dedicated to participatory photography and video, also based in the Middle East. He received a scholarship from the Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona to study for a master’s degree in photojournalism, and co-founded the collective Ruido Photo and the school of photography Ruido Formación, whilst launching an online magazine titled 7dot7. In 2009 he worked in Mexico documenting the migration route of Central Americans to the United States that became his book El Camino. In 2014 he fell in love with Gaza and its people, then the bombings started but he decided to stay, creating two projects What Remains and Gaza Mode d’Emploi, which was published by Le Courrier International and Granta magazine. His work is represented by Neutral Grey Agency (France). He is currently based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working as a freelance photographer and an AFP contributor. https://eduardosoteras.com

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

Plus this week photographer John Angerson takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Born in Bristol, England in 1969, John Angerson started his career in the early 1990’s, documenting the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changing geopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe. Since then, his practice has continued to explore different languages of documentary photography, focusing on how specific communities form, shift and develop. His personal projects have garnered critical acclaim and have been exhibited at major art institutions in the UK and overseas. His monograph Love, Power, Sacrifice published by Dewi Lewis documented the Jesus Army over a twenty-year period and peers into a microcosm of fanatical religion. His book English Journey in which John re-visits the 1934 travels of the writer J.B. Priestley across England was published by B&W Studio in July 2019. John now divides his time between creating personal work, hosting workshops and accepting commissions to photograph features and portraits for a range of magazines, charities, and design agencies including the Saturday and Sunday Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, El Pais magazine, and Der Spiegel magazine, Lloyds Bank and the British Heart Foundation. www.johnangerson.com

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/21/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-69-plus-photographer-john-angerson/feed/06006Travelling Through The Picture: Leiter, Dylan and Pennebaker…https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/18/travelling-through-the-picture-leiter-dylan-and-pennebaker/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/18/travelling-through-the-picture-leiter-dylan-and-pennebaker/#respondSun, 18 Aug 2019 07:35:14 +0000https://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=6278I recently purchased All About Saul Leiter an extremely good value overview of the career of the New York photographer. It’s a great book, not a large beautifully printed book, but a ‘keep-in-the-camera-bag-kind-of-a-book’, that due to its low price you don’t mind getting scuffed and coffee stained. It’s my kind of book and includes many of my favourite Leiter images particularly his black and white personal photographs.

Looking through the book I started to question just why I enjoyed looking at his work so much and what it was about his images that I find so inspiring. Then I noticed a theme developing within the images that I found most intriguing.

I was travelling through his images not just around them. I was on a journey that drew me into his world, traversing compositional layers, of framing and subject matter. His images contain multiple narratives that suggest rather than explain what the nature of the relationship is between the photographer and the character or characters within the frame. We don’t really know what’s happening but we go with Leiter on this. He leaves us with more questions than answers and doesn’t see to feel the need to explain anything in the titles for his images. All of this appeals to me.

If you know the work of Saul Leiter this will come as no great revelation. In fact if you have any interest in photographic composition you will be well aware of the use of depth of focus and image as a photographic device just as it has been a dominant theme within painting for many years. But sometimes I think we forget the importance of ‘what can be’ over the simplicity of ‘what is’.

Leiter’s images are complex, they demand thought. They question our understanding of what we are looking at and suggest that we create our own narratives for the characters we see. Are Barbara and J (see above) lovers, friends, sisters? Why has Barbara turned her back on J? And what is the significance of the flowers in the foreground if any?

These are the kind of photographs that demand my attention over those that rely on a flat objective documentation to deliver their narrative. I like a little soul, some emotion, some ambiguity. I like some rawness, some raggedy edges. I don’t want perfection I want an image to balance on the edge of failing. Just as I find perfect studio music production technically impressive but emotionally cold I like my photography to clearly show the unique thumbprint of its creator even if that means including a sense of frailty and of the accomplished amateur. I get this from Leiter and the invitation he provides with his images to enter his world.

This sense of travel has been at the forefront of my photographic thinking recently.

Whilst watching the brilliant and iconic D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back recently I was immediately struck by Pennebaker’s own use of compositional layering. I immediately grabbed my smartphone and started to photograph the television screen (see above). Grainy, black and white footage caught ‘on the fly’ in difficult lighting conditions, where composition becomes the foundation of a visual language that both carries and delivers the narrative from multiple perspectives. Just the way that Saul Leiter worked, and just like Leiter, Dylan has never felt the need to provide ‘answers’ or non-ambiguous narratives.

Images from Crash Happy: A Night at the Bangers. 1999. Grant Scott. Published by Cafe Royal Books.

Seeing the stills from Don’t Look Back and spending time with Leiter’s very personal black and white images has encouraged me to pick up my analogue 35mm camera again after a twenty-year hiatus. I have started shooting film again and believing in the serendipity of chance, the power of the grain and the revelatory nature of chemicals. In short I have returned to the photography and image-making that first inspired me to create photographs. Images that take risks, that force me to experiment with composition and to go further than the documentation of the obvious. Once again I am looking to create ambiguous images that reject the precise nature of the digital format. I am not denying that precision but I am certainly going back to my roots to try and find some of the soul that I think I may have misplaced.

As Bob Dylan put it, “Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull, I dreamed.
Romantic facts of musketeers foundationed deep, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”.

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/18/travelling-through-the-picture-leiter-dylan-and-pennebaker/feed/06278PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 68: ‘Photo Book Special Part 3’ Plus Photo Book Publisher Colin Wilkinson/Bluecoat Presshttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/14/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-68-photo-book-special-part-3-plus-publisher-colin-wilkinson-bluecoat-press/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/14/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-68-photo-book-special-part-3-plus-publisher-colin-wilkinson-bluecoat-press/#respondWed, 14 Aug 2019 05:00:55 +0000http://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=5681In episode 68 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed starting Part 3 of a three part series reflecting upon the history, funding, distribution, cost, creation, expectation, audience and future for photo books. This week he looks at self-publishing, crowd funding and distribution.

Plus this week publisher Colin Wilkinson/Bluecoat Press takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

In 1973, Colin Wilkinson founded the Open Eye project in Liverpool, England (that directly led to the Open Eye Gallery opening in 1977). Colin based the project on the Canadian Challenge for Change programme – which was established to give a voice to minority communities particularly through film and the emerging portable video technology. He pulled together a largely inexperienced small group of people and made 16mm films about community festivals before engaging community groups in making short videos. The project expanded and he acquired a derelict ex-public house in the centre of Liverpool on the basis of a six month lease which became a 10 year long residency. This gave him space to expand his vision of a community facility offering film, video, photography and sound recording. The ground floor bar area became the gallery (occasionally doubling up as a cinema) with a cafe attached. During the late 1970s, it became a key meeting place for bands (Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes practised in the basement below), photographers and other creatives. In 1982, he set up a commercial photographic company and in 1992 he founded Bluecoat Press, specialising in local history books with a high photographic content and published over 200 books until the 2008 financial crisis. Colin assessed his situation and decided that he would have to concentrate on a niche market he had the greatest interest in – and so became a photobook specialist. Since 2012, Bluecoat Press has specialised in publishing the work of British photojournalists and social documentary photographers including John Bulmer, Rob Bremner, Peter Dench, Bert Hardy, Jim Mortram, Tish Murtha, Paul Trevor, Nick Hedges, Hugh Hood and Patrick Ward. The books are available from many bookshops and galleries and can be ordered online. https://bluecoatpress.co.uk

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.

]]>https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/14/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-68-photo-book-special-part-3-plus-publisher-colin-wilkinson-bluecoat-press/feed/05681PODCAST: A Photographic Life, Episode 67: ‘Photo Book Special Part 2’ Plus Photographer Paul Russellhttps://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/07/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-67-plus-photographer-paul-russell/
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2019/08/07/podcast-a-photographic-life-episode-67-plus-photographer-paul-russell/#respondWed, 07 Aug 2019 05:00:00 +0000http://unitednationsofphotography.com/?p=5678In episode 67 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed starting Part 2 of a three part series reflecting upon the history, funding, distribution, cost, creation, expectation, audience and future for photo books. This week he looks at boutique publishers and the photo book as artefact. He also announces the launch of the A Photographic Life Podcast Plus initiative at www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Plus this week photographer Paul Russell takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’

If you have enjoyed this podcast why not check out our A Photographic Life Podcast Plus. Created as a learning resource that places the power of learning into the hands of the learner. To suggest where you can go, what you can read, who you can discover and what you can question to further your own knowledge, experience and enjoyment of photography. It will be inspiring, informative and enjoyable! You can find out here: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast

Paul Russell was born in London in 1966, and grew-up on the Sussex coast in the South of England and now lives in the coastal town of Weymouth. He studied animal behaviour at Nottingham University, which led to an interest in studying human behaviour and documenting these behaviours through photography. Paul’s work has been collected by the Museum of London, and he was one of forty-six international photographers profiled in Thames & Hudson’s landmark book, Street Photography Now. His work featured in the 2019 book, Street Photography – A History in 100 Iconic Images by David Gibson published by Prestel and has appeared in publications such as De Zeit, The Guardian Weekend magazine, the Independent on Sunday, Digifoto Pro, AP and Neon magazine. Paul is a prolific user of Twitter (@paulrussell99) as a platform to share his images and wry view of the world. www.paulrussell.info

Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Focal Press 2014) and The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Focal Press 2015). His next book New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2019.